Simply Mel(Formerly Mama Monoblogs)

Christmas Pictures Batch 2

**Update**

I just wanted to warn you that the quality of these pictures is not very good. We're still figuring out the settings on our camera and it was nighttime which does not make for good picture taking.

Next up, pictures of Christmas with Nana and Papa.

Madelyn and Papa enjoying some cuddle time

 

Gift time!

Katelyn finally got her pirate hat

 

Daddy and Maddy

Eating dinner

 

Katelyn and Me

        

The best shot we could get of Nana and Papa with the girls

 

I will probably have one more batch of these. I'm slowly adding the pictures to my December 2008 album in the sidebar. Those should be ready soon.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Christmas Recap and Pictures 1

So, now that it's safely past the new year I think I can finally post my Christmas pictures. You know, because that's how I do things on  my blog. This  recap may take a couple of posts so beware

My parents arrived safely on the 23rd with no problems this time. I was very excited and waiting anxiously for them. Christmas eve day was spent at my in laws eating Chinese food and attending our Christmas eve service. Then we all got up at a decent time on Christmas morning. The girls did not actually wake up that early. They woke up about 7:30 like they usually do. We had a great time opening gifts. Just in case some of you were wondering- the unwrapped gifts did not go over so well. Katelyn really enjoyed the unwrapping process. So, I guess this year we'll be wrapping gifts. I really thought I had something good going. Really!! My in laws came over with their gifts on Christmas day night and we all had a delicious dinner prepared by moi and my mom. Let me tell you, I think my girls got every Dora, Diego and Little Einstein's toy or item out there. We, my parents and my in laws must've cleaned out the toys stores of those specific characters. Katelyn and Madelyn were way beyond spoiled this Christmas as well as were Mike and I. I got some much needed clothing and jewelry from my parents and a bread maker and waffle iron from my in laws. I also received gift cards and other stuff I won't list here. I've already written about my seizures so I won't go over that again.I won't give you a blow by blow of every single thing we did but here is a little summary

-We ate out several times. Once at "The Macaroni Grill for my parents' anniversary.

-My mom and I also cooked several times.

-We watched several movies in the evenings. Not all of them good. I don't think Mike or my dad trust my mom and me to pick movies anymore.

-My dad played in the snow with Katelyn, which she loved.

-We went to the mall, hung out and just played together.

-My parents spent every moment they could with the girls.

 

I couldn't start out the Christmas recap without showing my girls in their Christmas finery

 

 

  

 

This is Christmas eve morning. Katelyn and Geempaw jamming together. You can see that Katelyn did not want her picture taken.

   

Mike, Uncle Bob, Katelyn, Madelyn and  cousin Kara at my in laws house for Chinese food Christmas eve afternoon

 

Christmas Morning

 

Geemaw passing out the gifts

   

Katelyn ripping open a present

 

Madelyn with her baby and Annie doll

 

I'll stop here for tonight. More pictures to come in my next post. I'll be adding an album to my side bar to put all my Christmas pictures in.

Good night!!

Merry Christmas One And All

I'm going to be taking a bloggy break until the New Year. With  Christmas being next week and the arrival of my parents I want to finish up some last minute things and not be focused on my blog. I will be back after the new year with a ton of pictures and several blog post ideas for 2009. I will be doing twitter updates so if you want to check my tweets on my sidebar you can. I'm sure there will be lots to twitter about! I wanted to leave you with some excerpts from " The Jesus I Never Knew" by Philip Yancey. Yancey beautifully and historically portrays, in my opinion, the arrival of Jesus on earth as a humble baby. These passages truly give me goosebumps and really opened my eyes to the Christmas story in ways they never have before. Let's not forget the true reason we celebrate Christmas this season. God gave us the greatest Gift of all  by sending the Prince Of Peace on earth in the form of a humble, helpless baby. He was sent to two very young, poor and humble, unmarried teenagers. I've heard it preached that Mary could have been as young as 14 years old when she conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

" Nine months of awkward explanations, the lingering scent of scandal- it seems that God arranged the most humiliating circumstances possible for his entrance, as if to avoid any charge of favoritism. I am impressed that when the Son of God became a human being he played by the rules, harsh rules:smalls towns do not treat kindly young boys who grow up with questionable paternity."

" ......I ask myself, if Jesus came to reveal God to us, then what do I learn about God from that first Christmas?The word associations that come to mind as I ponder that question take me by surprise. Humble, approachable, under-dog,courageous-these hardly seem appropriate words to apply to deity."

" The God who came to earth came not in a raging whirlwind nor in a devouring fire. Unimaginably, the Maker of all things shrank down, down, down,  so small as to become an ovum, a single fertilized egg barely visible to the naked eye, an egg that would divide and redivide until a fetus took shape, enlarging cell by cell inside a nervous teenager"

He goes onto describe a time he was in London watching Handel's "Messiah" and he described Queenn Elizabeth the IIand the fanfare that accompanies her anywhere she goes as well the attendants and abundant wealth she possesses. He then says:

" In meek contrast, God's visit to earth took place in an animal shelter with no attendants present and nowhere to lay the newborn king but a feed trough. Indeed, the event that divided history, and even our calendars, into two parts may have had more animal than human witnesses"........For just an instant the sky grew luminous with angels, yet who saw the spectacle? Illiterate hirelings who watched the flocks of others, "nobodies" who failed to leave their names. Shepherds had such a rand reputation that proper Jews lumped them together with the "godless" restricting them to the outer courtyards of the temple. Fittingly, it was they whom God selected to help celebrate the birth of one who would be known as the friend of sinners".

I hope these words touched your heart like they did mine. The whole chapter Yancey wrote on Jesus' roots is amazing but I could not rewrite it all here-LOL.

And of course, I must leave you with some pictures I took of my cuties day before yesterday. It was the first real snow we had. You all know how I feel about snow by now, I think, but I put my loathing aside and took the girls out for some play.

 

   

 

 

 

 

 

May the love of Jesus fill your hearts this Christmas and may you all have a blessed, warm, family filled Christmas.

Love and warm wishes

Melissa, Mike, Katelyn and Madelyn

 

Greening Up Christmas

With my pursuit of a more natural and green lifestyle I couldn't not do a post about how to green up your Christmas a bit. Lindsay at Passionate Homemaking did a fabulous post on frugal and green alternatives to conventional wrapping paper. She has generously allowed me to just link to her post and not have to do any of the work of writing all those ideas down. Besides the whole reusing paper gifts bags and using the cloth gift bags she has some other great ideas on how to reuse stuff you have around the house for wrapping. I won't even be wrapping most of my children's stuff this year. Besides the fact that they are not at the age where they care about wrapping all that much it's a huge mess to clean up and so wasteful. After watching a couple of Christmas themed cartoons Katelyn has expressed to me that she does want her present to be red and white. So I may wrap a couple of her presents so she can have the thrill of seeing some wrapped gifts. If you read a lot of older children's story books or see older Christmas cartoons the toys on Christmas morning are actually  never wrapped and alway just set out under the tree.. I thought it would be fun to provide that visual this Christmas and see how it went. Of course, as the kids get older I will be wrapping their gifts. But I will probably be trying some of these "greener" ways. One idea that I thought of(I think! I haven't actually read it anywhere)is using canvas shopping bags as a gift bag. That way the person can also use that to go grocery shopping with later on. I'm a huge fan of the canvas bag and carry most of my groceries in them now. They are also great for lugging so many other things around- library books, beach stuff etc etc. I also liked the idea of kid-decorated wrapping. It's personalized, fun and cute. So check out Lindsay's post on frugal and green alternatives to wrapping. You'll find a lot of fun, cheaper and creative ways to reuse stuff around the house for wrapping those Christmas gifts. Happy reusing!

Museum Of Science Holiday Party Pics(lots of pictures and a long post)

 Here they are folks! I'll start off by saying that I didn't get nearly the amount of pictures I wanted to get. We had planned on getting there by 10:00 am but due to the craziness caused by the power outage we didn't get there until 11:30. So, we were a little pressed for time after lunch was over. I had signed us up for two shows plus the Butterfly Garden which took up a lot of our time. So we probably didn't hit a quarter of what the Museum Of Science had to offer. Of course, silly me, I kept thinking Katelyn would love to see this show and that and I wasn't thinking about Madelyn. The first show we saw was "Fly Me To The Moon" in 3D. I had to leave that one pretty much at the beginning since Madelyn was not going to sit still for it. It lasted about 30 minutes. I did get to see Katelyn trying to grab the little bugs that were "floating" in front of us. *chuckles*

The next show was "Dinosaurs Alive" and it was in an Imax domed shaped theater. It was very steep stadium seeting and our chairs leaned back since  the whole front and ceiling of the theater was a screen. It lasted about 50 minutes. Since they expected you to exit up out of the theater and it was pitch dark in there I did not feel comfortable trying to leave with Maddy. So I did the best I could to entertain her for the documentary. She watched it at points but for the most pary chattered and said  " Geet down, geet down, all done, all done" a million times. She also cheered, clapped, and chewed on my necklace for most of the show. It was still a great time.

 

This was our table in the function room. We were on the 6th floor and had a fantastic view of Boston and the Charles(?) River. Two walls of the room were all glass. The food was delicious and plentiful and there was every choice imaginable. At one point the CEO and President of the company got up to give a little speech and when he was done Madelyn yelled " AMEN!!" It was really funny. They also had gift bags full of treats and candy for the kids. That, of course, was probably Katelyn's favorite part of the whole day. She kept "oohing and aahing" over everything she pulled out of the bag.

 

   

The Butterfly Garden was small and HOT but neat. The butterflies were gorgeous. This bowl that Katelyn is looking at has oranges and sliced bananas in it. The butterflies seemed to like that.

 

 

Yes, this is Katelyn flipping out because a butterfly landed on her belly. She was screaming her head off and I didn't know what to do since we're not supposed to touch them. An employee finally came over and shooed it away. With a comment about how he's never seen anyone freak out like that before. Yeah, right! She's a kid! I expect that from all children.

 

Great Amateur Photography alert! I was pretty proud of this picture I took. Pat on the back for me.

 

 

This butterfly was beautiful. It was a gorgeous blue color. And huge. Katelyn kept calling it a "Blue Morpho Butterfly" (from Go Diego Go) but I don't think that's what it's really called.

 

Supposedly if you stand right around where I was standing to take this picture this is what the world looks like from 8,000 miles in space. Or something like that...

 

   

Katelyn got very attached to this stuffed bear.

 

I was a little taken with him myself..

 

I did not realize Moose were that huge!!

 

Great Amateur Photography alert 2 and 3!!! This was the view we had when we went back up to the function room for coffee and dessert at 4:00. It was stunning.

 

My little lady with her wine goblet of water

 

Taking a dainty sip

 

My  not-so-dainty lady enjoying a cookie or three.

 

I love this shot of us looking out the window. I think it's awesome.

 

The last shot of the evening. Me and my friend Colleen who was there with her husband Jon who is a friend of Mike's, and also at the party. Whew, I'm out of breath just typing that!

Hope you enjoyed this post. And since it took a lot of work and time to put this up I expect a lot of comments. No, seriously.

 

Gettin' Ready To Partay

So, yesterday I was able to go shopping all day by myself which was a real treat. Our friend Jenn spent the night before with us and stayed all day and took care of K and M. I stopped first at Toys R Us and got my shopping done for K and M. I still may get some candy and trinkets to put in their stocking but for the  most part I am done with them. The cashier even let me use a $25 dollar off coupon and (shhh don't tell!) a $10 off coupon, totaling $35 off the total purchase amount. I was very grateful and thanked her profusely. She just shrugged and said "As long as the computer takes them I don't care". Then I was off to the mall to find myself a party dress(Ack!) and do some more shopping. After stopping at Lane Bryants(found nothing), JC Penney's(also nada) and Macy's I finally found a dress at Macy's. It's black,empire wasted and spaghetti strapped. Not to worry! It also has a sparkly shrug-like jacket to cover my almost bare shoulders. You'll get to see pictures. I also used a coupon on the dress because it was a tad more expensive that I planned on paying originally. The precendent for us at these work Christmas parties is that I have consistently been over dressed. I just hope that doesn't ring true for tomorrow-again. I then finished up Mike's Christmas shopping at Macy's. I just have to now shop for my MIL and parents. I had lunch at the food court and pulled out my borrowed copy of "Twilight" to get some uninterrupted reading in. I had also taken my stroller with me so I could put all my stuff in it and not carry it around. You would think no one had ever seen anyone do that!! I got so  many joking questions about " Where's the baby?" and " I hope your baby isn't under all that!!" Hardy har har.  Not only do you have to account for your actions with your kids in public to complete strangers, you now have to account for them even when they're not with you!! It was funny seeing all the smiling glances people gave to my stroller, expecting to see a child in it and then looking strangely at my cute,comfortable, overstuffed, Guess purse and  then up at me. I just smiled, nodded and went on my merry way. To each his own right?? If I want to push my purse around the mall I have every right. I hate being loaded down with stuff at the mall. I don't enjoy myself when I'm lugging a bunch of bags around. But I digress..

I then got a cute call from Katelyn telling me she had "pee-peed" and "poo-pooed" on the potty and was dry. So I told her I would bring her a special cookie from "Auntie Anne's". Turns out AA was totally out of the way for me so I stopped at Dunkin' Donuts to get two very special, uh......donuts. I got some Christmas-y frosted ones and figured the girls would be thrilled. I had a Chiro appointment on my way home from the mall so I didn't see the girls until after that, which was close to dinner time at this point. I got home and Katelyn was dying for her "special cookie". So, against my best judgement, let them devour their donuts right before dinner. I explained to Katelyn that I didn't get her a cookie but a special donut. She seemed to be completely fine with it. After she had snarfed it down, green frosting all over her face and all, she came to me demanding to know where her special cookie was. I somewhat patiently explained, again, to her that the donut had taken the place of the cookie. End of story. After telling me she didn't want a story she demanded her cookie again. She said she didn't want the donut and wanted a special cookie. I told her there was NO COOKIE. She impatiently explained to me in a tone that implied she thought I was less than intelligent that she would have the cookie tomorrow. I told her in no uncertain terms that THERE WAS NO COOKIE AND THERE WOULD BE NO COOKIE NOT NOW OR TOMORROW OR EVER FOR THAT MATTER!!! And if she kept acting like an ungrateful brat she would never get another treat again. She seemed pretty happy with the donut after that.

So, due to the busy couple of days ahead of us I won't be blogging probably until Sunday or Monday. Please contain the emotion. I know it's a hard blow to take. I'll be back, whenever that is, with a ton of pictures to share about our two parties. I shall leave you with some of the things I got the girls for Christmas this year:

 

Both girls are getting this

Katelyn is getting this

For my Maddy

 

For Maddy but I'm sure both girls will fight play with it

Both girls are getting one of these

 

Madelyn is getting Quincy. He will round out the group since we have or will be getting the rest of the group from the grandmas.

I so think Katelyn will love this game

For my little singing Diva, Katelyn

For both my Dora lovers

 

Katelyn has specifically been asking for the Candy Land castle. I don't think she quite knows what to do with it but it should be fun.

 

For Katelyn as well but I'm sure Maddy will play with it too.

 

Hope you enjoyed a peak into our Christmas list this year. Be back soon! Oh, and I still haven't uploaded the pictures to the Dec. album. Maybe tomorrow? Keep checking. They'll be there soon, I promise!

 

 

Trimming The Tree and Tea Pictures

Here are some pictures as promised. The rest I uploaded into my December Album. You can see them there. The quality of many of these pictures is terrible. I was playing with the settings on my camera and on my little screen the pictures looked fine. They looked fine until I uploaded them onto the computer. Then they were so not fine!

   

 

Love this angle!

 

Madelyn stealing the Diego ornament off-again

 

"Looky at what I got Mama!!"

 

 

 

Katelyn trying to add to the top of the tree from the stairs. Love this picture!

 

Daddy putting the star on the tree. Which later turned into an angel

 

K and M playing on the stairs and being silly

 

Love this picture of them although the quality is terrible!!

 

Katelyn playing dress up-again- posing in front of the tree. Maddy wouldn't stop long enough for me to get a good picture! You can also see how I decorated our bannister in the background and how I hung our stockings from there this time. I thought it was a brilliant idea.

 

Group shot of the Ladies Tea this past weekend

I'm off to go Christmas shopping today by  myself! My friend Jenn is watching the girls for me all day. There was a small glitch in uploading to the Dec 08 album so I'll work on that tonight. For now, just enjoy the pictures above :o)

December Dibs and Dabs

 

***Updated***

Wow, I'm updating already and this post is not even two hours old!! I forgot to mention a  couple of other things below that we are doing

-I cut out a picture of my parents faces and laminated it for Katelyn's calendar. I have a huge calendar used for preschool circle time(more on this in later post) that I do with Katelyn frequently throughout the week so she can learn days of the week, counting, and all sorts of other things. Anyway, I put the pictre of my parents on the day they are arriving in a few weeks so Katelyn can have a visual count down of how many days it will be before they get here. We also have a special calendar cut out for Christmas day that she can cound down to as well.

-Our church is going Christmas Caroling on the 14th. I'm curious to see how that turn out! We are planning on taking the girls in our double stroller and just REALLY bundleing them up.

-As I mentioned before, I would like to make a "birthday cake" for Jesus this year.

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It's my favorite time of the year!! I don't know about you but although the Christmas season is full of fun it's also one of the busiest. I've been reading a lot of blogs that are stressing "simplifying Christmas" and cutting out a lot of things so you and your family aren't running around like crazy during the Christmas season. While I see the merit of this I also tend to see things a little differently too. When Christmas times comes I want to do do do as much that is Christmas-y as possible. I want to bake with Katelyn, I want to bake for other people, I want to make Christmas crafts with the girls, decorate, start a new family traditions, carol, go to parties, have parties, listen to Christmas music, shop, go to our Christmas eve service, spoil my  kids rotten with a ton of loot on Christmas morning and take part in any other event that would involve Christmas at all. I want to do this because you only get one month each year to do any of that. Because I'm all about making memories. While I understand about not over doing it and being more stressed than cheery on Christmas,I think you can have a balance between focusing on Christmas related things and letting "other" things go for the month of December. Many people choose to only focus on Jesus during Christmas and buy only one or two gifts for their kids. That is fine. I want  my children to learn to appreciate what they have and not only focus on getting presents. But I think we also have to remember that children are children. They are going to focus on the presents no matter how many times you read about Jesus' birth or how many presents you get them, be it two or twenty. I do think that December is the  month you should " go all out" as much as possible. Spend as much time with friends and family and take your kids to see lights, Santa, a nativity play or whatever else floats your boat. Unless it's really what you want to do I don't think you should  just narrow it down to one or two events all in the name of simplifying so you can dust, clean your windows,  and follow some other rigid schedule you had set before December. I think you can focus on Jesus during Christmas and have fun "going all out" at Christmas time. Does this make sense? Anyway, enough pontificating. I had several little things to write about so I figured I'd just  do a Christmas dribs and drabs post-

-I love getting and giving Christmas cards. It's a thing with me. I anxiously check the mail every day to see who sent me Christmas cards. Then I happily hang them up. As of today I've only received 3. Are people sending them out late this year?? I myself am not completely done yet either. I've been sending out 5 or 6 each day and trying to pace myself. If you send me a card, you'll get one from me. If I don't get a card from you then I'll remember it for next year and your name is crossed off my list! (muah, ha ha ha) :o) It's a cut throat event with me, this sending Christmas cards thing. (Just kidding folks, just kidding! Or am I...?)

-It took us three days to finish decorating our tree but it's as done as it's going to be this year. We have yet to put out our lights so  I hope Mike gets on top of that soon. Madelyn loves playing " Pull The Ornaments Off the Tree , Put Them In My Mouth and Show Mom" so I have to keep an eye on her. Since Madelyn keeps taking ornaments off the tree Katelyn thinks it's a free for all as well. The tree gets redecorated several times a day. They are both obsessed with the Dora decorations we have so I am constantly finding them all over the place and putting them back on the tree.

- I love Christmas music. I've recently become enamored with " I Want  A Hippopotamus For Christmas". It's stuck in my head and Katelyn also walks around singing it.

-This Friday and Saturday we have two work Christmas parties that I am excited about. The first one is Mike's Lonza party. It's starts at 7:00 on Friday night and goes until 1:00 am. It's at the New England Center in Durham, NH. I have no idea what the NEC is or what we are going to do there. All I know is that it's semi formal and I have to go shopping for a new dress for it. Which, at this point in my weight, I am not very excited about. Mike was then invited by his old boss to attend his old job's Christmas party which is at the Boston Museum Of Science. We can take our kids and everything there is free for us. We signed up to see The Butterfly Garden, The 3D show about Dinosaurs and a "Fly Me To The Moon" show in their planetarium. It's an all day thing and they serve breakfast, lunch and dessert. I am soo excited about that. I think the girls will love it. The girls will be sleeping over at my inlaws Friday night since it's going to be a late nigh for us. We're going to stay in a hotel and then come back and pick up the girls Saturday morning and head straight to Boston with them. Sounds stressful but fun at the same time.

-Mike's current job had a Christmas party of sorts for the children of the employees of Lonza this past weekend. They rented out a whole theater so the children could watch "Bolt". Only one parent was allowed to go with the children so Mike got to take Katelyn to see it. It was her first time ever in a movie theater. They also offered a light lunch to everyone while they were there. I thought that was a cute idea. I just wished I had gotten the chance to go to. She did pretty good although Mike said she did ask to go home halfway through the movie and then needed to sit in his lap for most of it. I figured she would get pretty antsy since sitting for a long time is not her thing. She is a half hour show kind a girl. And even when she is watching Dora or something else she's up and dancing and running around for most of it. Mike bought her a stuffed " Bolt" and "Rhino" before the show so she would know what he looked like.

-I also forgot to mention last week(horrid mother that I am!) that Madelyn had her last bottle on Tuesday, Dec 2. Sniff!! She now has one of those Nuby cups at night before she goes to bed. She did fine with the transition. As long as she gets something she's fine with it.

- My Ladies Christmas Tea this past weekend was a blast and went great. We had a great turn out and several ladies brought guests. We had more food than we knew what to do with. We played Christmas pictionary and each had a part to sing and act out in our "12 Days Of Christmas" game. We revealed who our Secret Sisters were and exchanged gifts. There was a lot of laughing and fellowshipping. We did a couple of other activities to round out our night. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

 

Well, I was going to post several more pictures but this post has already gotten way too long. So, I guess my next post will be more pictures from our Christmas tree trimming and some from our ladies tea.

Introducing Diego!!

   

This is our new shelf elf! Have you ever heard of a Shelf Elf?

 

I've been reading about this Christmas tradition on a few blogs and mentioned it to MIL and she went out and got me one.(I'm so spoiled!) If you haven't heard about the Shelf Elf tradition this is the short version:

The elf is supposed to be a scout for Santa. When you get your elf you have to promptly name him. Katelyn named ours Diego. The book that came with our elf is really cute and explains the whole story. On the last page we write his name and when he came to us. So the scout elf keeps an eye on the kids and reports back to Santa every night. The next morning he shows back up in your house in a different place. The children will have a good time each day until Christmas trying to find out where the elf will be next. The only two rule is that there is no touching of the elf by the children. They may tell the elf their secrets they just can't touch him. On Christmas day the elf goes back to be with Santa unitl the next year. You can check out the Shelf Elf website for more info-www.theelfontheshelf.com. You can register your elf and get a letter from Santa to print out with your elf's name in it. You can also print out an adoption certificate.The website also lets you "tour" the North Pole. Cute!!

I thought this was  a cute tradition to start with my kids. Although I've made sure to tell Katelyn that Santa is just pretend I think they will have fun finding Diego every morning in a new spot. It will become a competition of sorts in the future. We've decided to not let our kids grow up thinking Santa is real. We really want to focus on the real meaning of Christmas but we don't want to leave Santa out completely.

Some other traditions I have started is doing a countdown calendar to Christmas with Katelyn. I guess it's sort of like an Advent calender. I got it off the One Step Ahead website.(which now I can't find so I don't know if they stopped selling it!) It's a Christmas tree that you velcro an ornament on from the first day of Christmas until Christmad eve. It's really cute.

We also do the usual baking together and I have some cute crafts I like doing with Katelyn for Christmas. We're going to make a birthday cake for Jesus for the first time this year. I had heard of that idea in the past and I thought it was cute.

What are some of the Christmas traditions you guys do with your families?

 

This is Diego's scouting spot for tonight. Who knows where he'll show up tomorrow??

 

8 Days and Counting!

Hello Folks!

So sorry I haven't kept up that well this month! I will have a ton of stuff to write by next week though, as well as pictures.

Well, lets see...

I'm pretty much DONE with my Christmas shopping. I just have to wrap stuff now. I'm sad that the Christmas season is almost over though...

I had my work Christmas party last week, our church Christmas fellowship was tonite. Both were a lot of fun. We had a yankee swap at church but you couldn't go out and buy anything. You had to find something in your house you wouldn't mind giving away. Let me tell you, there were a lot of interesting objects being swapped! I ended up with some sort of desk decoration (?). It looks like and obelisk and has what looks to be hieroglyphics on  it. It looks like it's made out of brass but it's actually some sort of other mix of materials that I don't recognize. Anyway, not sure what to do with it. I can see why someone would want to get rid of it! It's about 8 inches tall.

This past Friday was my school's yearly Christmas show. My class perfromed "Rockin Around The Christmas Tree" and they did so great. They were so cute! Katelyn's toddler class also performed a song. They did " Santa Claus Is Coming To Town". Katelyn just sat on stage playing with the santa hat they had put on all the kid's heads. I thought she might get up and start walking around. Other toddlers did but not her! She was too busy trying to put the hat back on and peel name tags off the carpet she was sitting on. It was still really cute.

I have the week off next week. I"m so psyched.  I need that time to recover from Christmas and enjoy all my new gifts

We saw "The Nativity Story" this weekend  and it was great!  Some of the effects and content were kind of corny but it was a beautiful movie. A must see. I cried through most of it. I loved the way the movie really showed the "human" side of Joseph and Mary and just what their life must have been like at that time. It put a really interesting spin on details that the Bible doesn't mention or make real clear.  I have learned recently that Mary was probably between 12-14 years old when she became pregnant with Jesus. That is amazing. The movie actually had a young girl who looked like she was in her early to mid teens playing Mary. 

Ladies, you will fall in love with Joseph by the end.  The movie did a great job portraying him as a strong, faithful, sweet man who just "inherited" a pregnant fiance whom he barely knew. The lengths he goes through to take care of her is sooo cute. I can really imagine the real Joseph being just like this character. It shows them slowly getting to know each other on their way to Bethlehem and falling in love.  (Big sigh here...)  Go see it!!!!!

I'm going to close here. Since "Desperate Housewives" is a rerun I have to get ready for tomorrow.

Ta Ta!